Focus
Governor Newsom and California lawmakers hit an impasse on financing bullet train
Los Angeles Times – September 3
A battle to secure an additional $4.2 billion for the California bullet train has hit an impasse, with Governor Gavin Newsom and legislative leaders failing to reach a compromise last Friday. Unless the two sides resume talks soon, any additional money for the bullet train will have to be negotiated in 2022, forcing the rail project to dip further into the roughly $2-billion pot it has in hand.
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News
San Diego County approves plan for more affordable housing
The San Diego Union-Tribune – September 1
Last Tuesday, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a plan they hope will boost efforts to build housing for low- and middle-income San Diego residents. The measure calls for the county chief administrative officer to evaluate options for “equitable housing” and enlist housing consultants in that effort. It also asks the director of the General Services department to perform a real estate market assessment of Sorrento Valley East and West “to document general market trends and conditions for potential future acquisition and redevelopment along the transit corridor,” the board letter stated.
Facebook fund helps bring 500 affordable housing units to Bay Area
San Francisco Chronicle – September 1
Last, Wednesday the Community Housing Fund, a new $150 million affordable housing fund established a year ago by Facebook and two nonprofits, Partnership for the Bay’s Future and Destination: Home, announced that it had made its first investments: $40 million that will provide key funding for four developments that will create about 500 units of affordable housing. While affordable housing developers rely on low-income affordable tax credits and affordable housing bonds to bankroll construction, it is much harder to borrow money for predevelopment work, which includes land acquisition, design, legal services, and environmental review. That portion of funding is the target of the new Facebook vehicle.
Should 4,400 UC Irvine homes count toward city’s new housing goal?
The Orange County Register – September 3
Faced with a state mandate to plan for more than 23,600 new homes over the next eight years, Irvine city leaders are looking at all possible avenues to meet the goal – including potentially reducing the total by thousands of homes that are already built but never counted. Irvine is asking state Housing and Community Development officials, who must sign off on all cities’ housing plans, to include 4,400 units of existing housing for UC Irvine grad students, families, and staff in a plan that covers 2021 through 2029 – which would take a significant bite out of the number of new homes the city must accommodate.
Debate continues over affordability, parking, height of BART housing
Berkeleyside – September 3
In the coming months, plans to build new housing at two Berkeley BART stations will begin to solidify and discussions around height, parking, and affordability levels are likely to heat up. Meetings about the project have been going on for years, and actual project designs are not expected until 2022. The 2018 directive from the state to build housing at Bay Area BART stations in an effort to address the ongoing housing crisis means that local discretion will be more restricted than is typically the case for Berkeley, with a streamlined timeline for review.
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